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I’m sure some of you have already noticed that I draw, from time to time, with pencil and paper all oldskool-style. Yep. But occasionally I have no idea what to draw. So, I’ll ask you!

Reply with whatever things you’d have me draw. Nothing too weird or gruesome, please (violence, nudity and porn are alright, but no weird fetishes or body horror!), and I’ll see what I can do. It’ll be good practise, I hope.

Today, I decided to update my blog a bit. Write a new post, make the whole thing a little neater-.. see? There’s even some relevant links in the sidebar now! Isn’t that just awesome?… well okay maybe not.

A lot has happened in my personal life. Two former teammates have decided to take a direction that I can’t follow them in, and now they’re trying to convince me they own the copyright to some of my work. So far, they haven’t brought up much of an argument, and weren’t ready to discuss the use of my works on my own terms. So, meh to them. MEH, I say.

I’ve also been reading Homestuck like a zealot. It’s awesome and complicated, just the way I like things. Takes a while to get through the first pages, but when it starts clicking together and making sense, you’ll love it. It has adorable moments, awesome moments, references to all sorts of silly game and computer things and well… this. Spoiler alert, although I think it makes a fair trailer for the whole story. It’s about gods, kids, universes-within-universes-within-frogs-within-universes, trolls of the annoying kind, trolls of the murderous kind and trolls of the totally adorable kind, and pretty much anything a story could need. It’s so involved, and internally-consistent that it’s hard to imagine a single person making this, without years upon years of planning and a lot of retconning. Then again, there’s time travel all over the place and causality takes a few hits for the good of the story occasionally so I guess that is almost like a retcon. Sort of, kind of?

Lately, I’ve been obsessing over Skyrim. It’s the sequel of two of my favourite games ever, Morrowind and Oblivion. Morrowind being the more fun and stable of the two, and Oblivion having better eyecandy and easier quests due to the map and go-this-way HUD thingie.

Personally, I loved the freedom in Morrowind most of all. You could lock anything, open anything, go anywhere, fly all over the place (levitate was fun, though a bit slow. Flight mechanics that affected speed would’ve made it much more fun to mess with), and create your own spells and enchantments. There were few things you couldn’t do, in my eyes. It was a wide-open world with quests all over the place.

Oblivion had a bit more visual appeal. It was brighter, more vivid and more detailed than Morrowind ever had been.. but something was missing. Enchanting wasn’t as simple and spellcrafting was all-but-impossible until you finished the arcane academy quests (was that their name? I lost interest all the time, and forgot). Levitate had gone, but telekinesis got marginally more interesting to compensate. You could actually lift physical objects now, although you couldn’t move them fast enough to actually do any real damage with them. Still no hope of the constant-effect area damage spell or enchantment I’d been hoping for since Morrowind, either. Nor beam-like spells, nor other little fantasies of mine. Most of the game actually did go the right way though, with everything being smoother and more streamlined. But.. it never felt quite as charming as Morrowind. Oh well. It had poisons. I was happy.

Skyrim has now.. surpassed both Oblivion and my own expectations. Enchanting got simplified a little more, and spellcrafting went away completely, but alchemy is more fun now, levelling up properly is not as tedious anymore (keeping check of exactly what skills I needed to level up to get the right stat point options at level up… was never a fun thing in either of the earlier games), and there’s dragons. Everywhere. You can walk around, and spot a dragon flying by. Sometimes, it’ll attack. Other times, it’ll just roar a bit and fly over, then lose interest. Huh.. odd. Oh well.

Dragon shouts. You get some kind of magical ‘shouts’ with a cooldown, when you find certain ruins with ancient texts in the language of the dragons. You can unlock those shouts by absorbing the souls of dragons. And you use those shouts so you can survive fighting said dragons. Well, that’s plain enough. So far, I’ve seen a force-push, a fire breath and a freeze-everything breath, among others. Oh right… spoiler alert. As if you didn’t expect to have fire and frost involved in a magical-ish power in one of the Elder Scrolls games.

I love how you can snatch a bug out of the air and use its wings for an alchemical reagent. Or hunch over a river and grab a fish out of the water. Yum! Wolves will hunt deer now, and people eat food and craft weapons and wander around and everything we were promised for Oblivion! The only downside is that Skyrim crashes about as often as Oblivion and Fallout: New Vegas combined, but eh. It crashes in a semi-neat way and autosaves everywhere, and the quicksave feature is actually quick. So is the quickload. Use them often!

So yeah. Basically, I love this game. In the past 2 days, I’ve been playing it for 21 hours. I had been waiting for it for half a year. Waiting for Steam to unlock it for a day and a half, with the dvd-box clutched in my very hands! Oh yeah.. I felt kind of betrayed that there was no non-Steam version of the game this time, unlike the past two Elder Scrolls. Having to trust an online service to let you play the game you bought is one thing, but when you expect to find yourself, five years later, still wanting to play that game.. yeah. I’m going to hope nothing happens to my account, or I’ll be one sad gamer. An angry gamer. Pissed-off at the horror that is Steam, and DRM, and online distribution services. I’m.. not a fan. But, that aside, I am fully expecting it to become a classic, that people would turn back to play years later. Different from the throw-it-out-there style of games that seem to be the norm nowadays. I’m hoping it’ll age gracefully, with mods to keep it alive and well. Knowing Bethesda, and the games before.. I think it will.

If you’re feeling wordy, hop on and write a comment: tell me what you think!

Portal 2 is about to be released. Now!-ish. Really, the moment it will be, depends on how many people play the other games from the so-called “Potato Sack” on Steam. It includes Portal 2, but also has a load of other fascinating indie games that you should check out! Seriously, you won’t regret it if you’re at all into experimental gameplay. And hey, the more people play those, the faster we can see Portal 2 happen!

Well then.

I’ll be off.

Playing some game called “AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity”.

Hey all, today I stumbled upon this. It’s a video of a robbery.. a polite one. One might almost dare say, “the most polite robbery in history”, although that may be disrespectful to similar, lesser-known incidents. So, I’d like to talk with you again about..

I’m sure we can all agree that this robber does not look nor sound like a stoner, or an alcoholic. There’s no reason to assume he’s lying about his (and his children’s) needs. Yeah, he could be trying to get rich quick. But you just know you’re going to get caught if you try to make a habit of robbing stores, so that just can’t be it. He’s too calm and collected to try something reckless like that for so little reason. So, he’s desperate. And robbing out of necessity.

For each crime, there is a reason. It may be silly, like vandalizing a home because it’s fun. It may be petty, like murdering a neighbour because of their yapping dog. And for some, it is valid. Some people can’t get a job, and just don’t see any other way to support their family. They may have once been upstanding citizens, who just had a run of bad luck. They may have been teens who made a poor decision. The reason why they have a family to support doesn’t even matter.

What matters is, how can we stop these crimes?

The easy solution seems to be the best: punish anyone who breaks the law. After all, it’s a free country and you’ve always got a choice, right?
Well… that doesn’t seem to work. People still commit crimes.

The second-best solution is to remove any criminals from the street, permanently.
Wouldn’t this make us just as bad (or even worse) as the criminals we’re dealing with?

Alright then, third-best solution.. medicate them into oblivion.
I have some personal qualms with this one.. locking someone up inside their own body, unable to even think straight? That sounds like hell on earth. No, thanks.. I’d almost prefer to just “adopt” a criminal and help them get through their problems myself. Almost.

So.. what’s left? We remove the reason they’re turning to crime in the first place. In this case, a lack of money.
Or, in other words.. we implement the basic income guarantee. Let people do what they want to do, and let them at least make enough money for a simple life. Those who want something better will still keep working, without the worry of losing their job in times of recession or when they’re feeling down.. after all, they’ll have enough money to keep up their lifestyle for a good while anyway, since their basic needs of life are met for free.

Does anyone here think we would still see such robbers, if that happened? Yes, addicts would still want more. Still, we’d see a huge reduction simply because there’s no more need for normal people who are down on their luck to resort to such things.

If any politician were to support this, they’d have my vote. Yours too?

I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately. No coding, no gaming and no real creative work done. On the other hand, I’ve started living healthy and kept it up for 3 days already. Lost a bit more than a kilo (2.2 pounds) in the first 2 days. I simply cut all sugar and lots of carbs, and played a few rounds of DDR every evening. It works.

I’ve also written a simple “write-this-data-to-a-stream” type function for a gamedev group called Thorworks, to do some basic network stuff.. and I’ve been chatting up this one hot gamer girl. Who I’ve talked about in the past, only less descriptive. No, it’s not the one from the silly question, it’s the other one. Guess I’ll refer to the other one as metalhead girl for now, I don’t want to mention any actual names. It just seems like bad form.

So yeah. Stuff. Sorry for the lack of updates. Have an awesome to make up for it.

Hey folks! I’d like to tell you about this project I started 8 months or so ago.

You see, there’s a community I’ve been part of for a long, long time. The Blade Mistress community. Most of them, a friendly bunch. Some are hyper, some are silly, some are simply insanely fucking awesome… Well yeah, that happens. And one’s quite hot. But that’s another story.

The people in that community have been showing a lot of promise for ages now, constantly striving to improve upon the few bits and pieces they have left of the original game called “Blade Mistress”. It’s essentially abandonware, except it has not been abandoned.. AT ALL… by the community. There have been at least six attempts to bring it back or make a sequel. One server that I know of is still running, after figuring out just how to make the client software bring out its server-y goodness. So, at one point… I decided, “fuck it”. I made a sequel. Grabbed a copy of NeoAxis off the net, started coding, and attracted quite a few people who would be happy to help. Sure, some of them just kind of forgot about it. Others have stayed faithful all the time. Heck, even I took a break from it at one point. But now I’m back, bitches. Yes.

And if I’m linking to awesome stuff anyway, here’s a video of what our mapper has been doing this whole time. Yes, he has made pretty much all of that by himself. I envy the talented bastard. The only thing that he hasn’t made by himself is the water, that’s simply NeoAxis’ default stuff. But yeah, artists don’t make realtime water. Programmers do. I should get on that one day, perhaps I could make something awesome just a little moreso. For now, though, functionality is the priority.

I’ve been unsure what to write, lately. I know I could write about my vacation, but I can’t do it the justice it deserves at the moment. I could write about the wonderful ideas I’ve had, but I just don’t feel I could properly explain them without the help of all sorts of tools. Most of which only really help when talking to someone in realtime. Frankly, I’ve been..

Lately, a friend of mine (Nino) commented on “me and my insight”. It confused me. Nobody had ever attributed that one trait to me before. It got me thinking.. Yes, I do have some insight, sometimes. When I’m honestly listening, and in a state of mind where I’m actually capable of remembering all that’s said for more than a mere moment, I can sometimes be quite observant. It’s a pity that doesn’t happen too often, then. I hear insight goes well with an air of sophistication, and hey.. the bitches dig sophistication. Word, yo.

So!..

Lately I’ve been talking with this one girl. She is smart, fun to talk to and she probably outgeeks me on a daily basis. The only problem? She’s in America. I’m in Europe. Lovely… That’s farther than I’ve ever traveled for a potential love interest, which is saying quite a bit.

Preparations for the trip to Morocco have taken up a lot of my time. Also, cats scratching on my bedroom door at 7 AM repeatedly (sort of) ended up with me having a few groggy days. Thus, no posts for you folks for a week… but hey, I still love you all😀

So, today my mom asked me to come along to buy a few cables for camera stuffs. She’s never too sure what to get when she’s by herself, so she wants my advice. After a stroll through the store, we ended up near the camera aisle for the final bit on our shopping list. An SD card. We looked around, and with all these gadgets around it was hard not to consider something cool. My mom soon caved and asked one of those MediaMarkt guys about this one camera she liked. I just listened as the two talked for a bit, the MediaDude treating my mother like the complete computer noob every 60-year-old woman obviously is (hint: she isn’t, and plenty of them aren’t). After a while, I asked about using it as a webcam. Sure, he said. It would kill most PC’s since it requires quite a bit of RAM, but if I had 8gb or more, it should be possible. Hint: I have 12. So yeah. We looked at some other models, and ended up buying one, all the while talking about its use as a webcam and the project I’d use it for. Not one word.. not one… that the one we eventually picked wouldn’t do it. I had to find that on the net, after trying by myself for a while. Fucking hell..

650€ wasted on this piece of crap. Well, of course, only half of it is the part that I promised I’d contribute for webcam stuff. And I’d pay that part back at home. So I haven’t actually lost anything. Still, this means we have to go back and sort things out and stuff.. it’s not fun. Heck, it’s never fun to bring a gadget back because it just doesn’t want to do what it’s supposed to.

Ah well..

So.. I’ve been thinking of writing some sort of library/program that takes a number of 2D inputs, takes a moment to calibrate itself (determine camera positions and such) and turns the inputs into a 3D scene output that can be viewed from any camera angle. It’d be useful for video chatting, game customization and porn. And detailed, 3D imagery of naked bodies, in turn, would provide good reference material for people learning how to make 3D characters from scratch. Or paint 2D characters. No matter what you’re making, if it involves anything with layers you’ll want to start with the bottommost layer-… the skin, in this case. And then draw clothes and such over it. Every art teacher will tell you it’s the best way to get proper proportions.

To make such a program, though, I’ll need multiple webcam-type cameras. And while I have three, two of them are low-resolution and get grainy in low light conditions, and the third is average at best. I’ll need better source material to work with at first, when I don’t have properly tuned code yet. So yeah. Nothing there, for now. And frankly, I’m done typing. This is all I have to say for now. More or less.

Alright, perhaps I could add that I’d love to see such 3D imagery of a certain lady I know. Perfectly innocent stuff, of course. You all know I’m as innocent as they come.